Schizophrenia: homework help

[Helevitia]

Greetings,

My son is doing a report on Schizophrenia but we can't seem to find two things...

1. When it was first diagnosed
2. Who studied and discovered it.

Thanks in advance for the help!

[RhinoZ]

Holy Smokes. How old is your son??
Sorry to post and not be able to help, but I had to ask.

[Helevitia]

He's 14. He has to give an oral report tomorrow.

So far, we haven't found a good answer. It's tougher than it seems. Closest we came is it dates back to the egyption times.

Dave

[RhinoZ]

Man,
I'm glad I'm not in school anymore. Egyption times..wow I'm surprised. Maybe I should go back to school.
Sorry wish I could have helped, but I can only google.
R

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by RhinoZ
Man,
I'm glad I'm not in school anymore. Egyption times..wow I'm surprised. Maybe I should go back to school.
Sorry wish I could have helped, but I can only google.
R

No worries, I can only google too Oh, and I asked jeeves too

Dave

[Ees]

I can only google too, but misspelling it as "schizofrenia" led me to this page:

http://www.iquebec.ifrance.com/alainriouxpq/schztxt.htm

It's in French, so Babelfish it. Pages 2 and 3 seem to argue that schizophrenia didn't exist before the 17th or 18th century, and Philippe Pinel (1745-1829) was the first to study the symptoms.

But hey, if there's still time, read it yourselves. Being Dutch, I'm not sure what's more difficult to read: the French version (I think I get the main arguments, but i may very well be mistaken) or the Babelfished English. :-)

Martin

[Fat Tone]

Hele

I've written various programs (experiments) investigating aspects of Schizotypy but don't pretend to know much about it. I passed your question on to a lecturer here and this is her reply:

well, I would say it has been around in all human cultures, but the first formal diagnosis is generally accredited to Emil Kraepelin (1896) who called it "Dementia Praecox" and then in 1911 Bleuler (can't remember his first name off hand) redefined it as "schizophrenia" although the classifications and key symptoms from Kraepelin were maintained and are still reflected in today's diagnostic criteria (ie the hallucinations, thought disorder, delusions etc).
I'm not sure where you'd find the original books, but Bleuler did a book in 1950 on schizophrenia which is relatively easy to get hold of (I believe our library does it even!). Otherwise, I would imagine any textbook chapter on schizophrenia would mention these names.

If your friend already knew this but had wanted to find the first report of someone suffering from psychosis I would say this is pretty impossible - reports now suggest early writings describing ill people from ancient rome and greece with hindsight probably had schizophrenia but until the 1900's it was not seen as a separate, diagnosable illness but just an bunch of "lunatic" people with individual "mad" symptoms.

hope that helps,
A

T.

[Helevitia]

Thanks for the help all His report is due today and he is already in school. Hopefully the little info we found will be enough. Thanks again!

Dave

[NuGGeTTi]

what i think is that it was diagnosed in the ancient egypt at the time of nefertiti nefertuaren ! im facinated by egypt! anyways so that would make it around 3000 YEARS ago omfg! coz schizophrenia has allways existedas far as i know but i think it was the egypts that diagnosed it to be a disace....

typ0's i know...

[leech]

I do a lot of research into ancient civilizations and oddly enough know some one who is schizophrenic. Interesting that you found references leading to Ancient Egypt. Through google?

Leech